Canada sues Google alleging anti-competitive conduct in advertising

Canada’s Competition Bureau is suing Alphabet’s Google over alleged anti-competitive conduct in online advertising, the antitrust watchdog has said.

The Competition Bureau, in a statement on Thursday, said it had filed an application with the Competition Tribunal seeking an order that, among other things, requires Google to sell two of its advertisement tech tools. It is also seeking a penalty from Google to promote compliance with Canada’s competition laws, the statement said.

Google said the complaint “ignores the intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice, and we look forward to making our case in court”.

“Our advertising technology tools help websites and apps fund their content, and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach new customers,” Dan Taylor, vice president of Global Ads at Google, said in a statement.

The Competition Bureau opened an investigation in 2020 to probe whether the search engine giant had engaged in practices that harm competition in the online advertisements industry and expanded the probe to include Google’s advertising technology services earlier this year.

The investigation found that Google is the largest provider across the advertisement tech stack for web advertising in Canada, and it “has abused its dominant position through conduct intended to ensure that it would maintain and entrench its market power”, the bureau said on Thursday.

The case follows the United States Justice Department’s effort to show Google monopolised markets for publisher advertisement servers and advertiser ad networks.

Google has argued that the US Justice Department is ignoring the company’s legitimate business decisions and that the online advertising market is robust. The company also says the US government had cherrypicked a narrow slice of the online market and did not account for aggressive competition.

The closing arguments in the US case were made on Monday.